File-Based User Integration - Bulk User Import/Export

Issue/Objective

Upload users in Bulk

Environment

PolicyStat

Procedure/Resolution

File-Based User Integration

If your organization already has a list of users stored in another product (eg. Active Directory, PeopleSoft, Salesforce, HealthStream, Lawson etc.) you can benefit from streamlined user management by using PolicyStat’s Bulk User Upload feature. Bulk User Upload allows site administrators to use a CSV (comma-separated values) file to create and update hundreds or thousands of accounts at once. You work with your IT staff to obtain a conforming CSV file, upload this file inside PolicyStat and enjoy the benefit of easy user synchronization.

Note: For completely automated user management, (including password management) we recommend that you evaluate our LDAP-based integration.

For Site Admins: Using Bulk User Upload

1. Obtain a conforming users CSV file from your IT department.
2. Browse to Admin Console under Manage, then to User Management and then to Bulk Account Update.
3. Follow the instructions on the page to download/upload and synchronize your users.

For IT: Integration Overview

File-based user integration allows you to use your system of record (Active Directory, Lawson, etc) as the source of all user information in PolicyStat, with a periodic synchronization process. Through an export process specific to your current system of record, you produce a CSV file in the specified format that contains the user information required for PolicyStat accounts. Someone in your organization then uploads this file via the PolicyStat web application to synchronize your user information. The details of this file are outlined in the For IT: User CSV File Details section.

Optionally, if your organization wishes to take advantage of user grouping within PolicyStat, you have the ability to include arbitrary user metadata that will be stored with the user. Site administrators will then need to contact PolicyStat Support to define rules for mapping that data to user groups.

The details for including this user metadata for group mapping is outlined in the For IT: User Metadata Details section.
 

Notes¶

• It is possible to automate this upload process via scripting.
• The user export should only contain active users who require PolicyStat accounts.
• Users who exist in PolicyStat, but are not present in an upload will be marked inactive in PolicyStat if the Deactivate users not in the upload? box is checked. This means their history will be available, but they will not be able to log in and their accounts will be deactivated (they can be restored if needed).
• If you're utilizing Single Sign-On (SSO), deactivated users will be able to reactivate themselves by authenticating in PolicyStat again. This is something that will need to be resolved locally.
• Any current user who is marked as ldap_excluded within PolicyStat will not update through this functionality.

For IT: User CSV File Details.

The CSV file should be formatted with a header row defining the order of fields in your file. The headers should be (in this order):

• Username
• Email
• First Name
• Last Name
• Title
• Default Policy Area
• Initial Password
• Home Site Subdomain

CSV Header Example

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
1	Username	Email	First Name	Last Name	Title	Default Policy Area	Initial Password	Home Site Subdomain
2	mboxberger	[e-mail]	Mark	Boxberger	VP of Client Services	Client Services	234wadf92hdsf	handbook

Username and one of either first name, last name or title are required. All other fields can optionally be left blank (but the headers are still required).

If taking advantage of user metadata for user group definition purposes, you can also include one or more fields prefixed with _meta_. More details about these fields are available in the For IT: User Metadata Details section.
 

Field Definitions

Username

This unique name will be used by the user to log in. In general, this should be something very familiar, such as their Active Directory login.

This field is required and is the key on which users are deemed to be equivalent. That means that if a user is deleted and that username appears in a subsequent CSV upload, that will be treated as the original user being re-activated.


Example

mboxberger

steve.ehrlich

Additional Notes

• Leading and trailing whitespace will be stripped
• Usernames will be converted to lowercase

Email

The users’ contact email address. This will be used for notifications and password resets.


Example

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

First Name

The user’s given name. This will often be pre-pended to their last_name for display.


Example

Mark

Steve

Last Name

The user’s surname. This will often be appended to their first_name for display.

Example

Boxberger

Ehrlich

Title

The user’s professional title. This will often be combined with their first_name and last_name for display. This field is especially useful for distinguishing between users with identical names.

 

Example

VP of Client Services

CEO

Default Area

The name of the department or area in which this users’ newly-created department should be placed, by default. This field can be blank.


Example

Client Services

CEO

Initial Password

A plain-text password that will be used in combination with their username as login credentials.

Additional Notes

• Once a user logs in using this password, they will be required to choose a new password.
• On new user creation, if this field is left blank, the user will be required to use the Forgotten Password link and their email address to create their own password.
• If a user receives a blank password but has no email address, your PolicyStat site admin will be responsible for configuring their password.
• This password is salted and hashed before storage. PolicyStat does not have the ability to retrieve the plain-text version of this password after it has been set.
• If a user has already created a password, this field will be ignored.

Home Site Subdomain

This column is only used by customers with multiple facilities who are taking advantage of PolicyStat’s applicability features to maintain multiple policy libraries. Most customers should not include this column.

This field contains the single subdomain of the PolicyStat site which will be considered the user’s Home Site. This home site generally maps to a specific facility whose policies are most applicable to that individual. The user will be required to login from the specific URL for that site, and their username must be unique for that site.

During implementation, you will have decided on a topology for your policy libraries consisting of multiple PolicyStat sites with unique subdomains. For example, hospital-site1.policystat.com and hospital-site2.policystat.com would indicate subdomains of hospital-site1 and hospital-site2, respectively.

When generating your CSV, you will likely use information like:

• Organizational Unit
• Business Unit
• Process level

to map towards a specific PolicyStat Home Site.

General Notes

• To bulk upload non-ASCII or double byte usernames, first save the CSV file in UTF-8 including BOM.
• In general, a blank field for a user that already exists will not change the value of that field. It will instead leave the current value.

For IT: User Metadata Details.

To include arbitrary data about your users to be used for creating user groups, you can include one or more additional columns with that data. This will store the string (text) representation of the data as a value corresponding to the header you assign the column. To indicate that a column is metadata, simply prefix the header with _meta_ followed by the type of data, followed by the label you would like to apply to the data.

Example

For example, if you would like to include a user’s Job Code, which is just some unique text, you would add a column named:

meta_text_Job Code

Data Types

Currently, the only type of data that PolicyStat recognizes is text data. In the future, we might add additional datatypes like integer or date that enable different types of user group rules.

Creating User Group Rules

Then, Site Administrators will be capable of creating a rule like:

ALL users with Job Code of 1101

are members of the User Group Nursing.

Sites that are not integrated with Active Directory can use metadata values to create rule-based Smart Groups in PolicyStat. Contact PolicyStat Support for assistance in creating the Smart Groups once the metadata is present in PolicyStat. The details for including this user metadata for group mapping is outlined in the For IT: User Metadata Details section.